Hostile and Hospitable Programmatic Architectures

Abstract Much of the conversation about ungrading has thus far focused on its impacts in the classroom, improving student learning and addressing ongoing inequities. Yet addressing the administrative structures necessary to sustain ungrading is equally important, especially considering the labor conditions of contingent, minoritized, or otherwise vulnerable faculty. This article proposes hostile/hospitable programmatic architectures as a framework for understanding how institutional ecologies may be configured in ways that undermine or support the use of equitable assessment practices. Where hostile programmatic architecture neglects the risk vulnerable faculty take on in using a new assessment practice, a hospitable programmatic architecture, deliberately attentive to faculty labor conditions and institutional locatedness, relies on supportive, cross-hierarchical relationships and ample material and affective resources to open institutional spaces for the effective use of ungrading. The article closes with a brief heuristic for writing program administrators and other departmental/university leaders interested in assessing the hospitality of their own program.